Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to attract new traffic is publish great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the automation process. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing just by consistently publishing content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are researching any and every opportunity they can to improve their performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things are working according to schedule in the widget-making assembly line when everything grinds to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the box for 5 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his utility belt and makes a single tap about 1 cm from the top-right edge of the box.
Immediately, every machine inside the plant begins working once more.
The floor manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Unable to contain his anger and sense of outrage, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for investing years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to get certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things work to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of a number of different parts such as your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Services
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content gets published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external platforms to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to help speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site data are set up, the account details can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, you can add visitor tracking code to WordPress using a plugin and feed data automatically to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, use your account information with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping various update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins – Configuration
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is immune from cyberattacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easy for search engines to index …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Steps For Your WordPress Site
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Tags & Categories
WordPress post tags & post categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is add content regularly to automatically start generating traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
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This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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